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Bu-lat-lat (boo-lat-lat) verb: to search, probe, investigate, inquire; to unearth facts Volume 3, Number 3 February 16 -22, 2003 Quezon City, Philippines |
The
War and Premeditated Genocide : What is at Stake? By
James Petras Back
to Alternative Reader Index
According
to UN estimates over 10 million Iraqis will be killed, injured, displaced or
traumatized by the U.S. war of aggression.
It is highly likely that U.S. military intelligence figures coincide.
Washington has put in place a military plan involving hundreds of war
planes and a sea armada directed to dropping thousands of tons of explosives on
Iraqi cities, towns, essential infrastructure and defense installations.
The mass media around the world report each and every ground, air and sea
deployment in greater or lesser specificity. U.S. public officials openly speak of the systematic
destruction, plunder and prolonged occupation of Iraq. Genocide
– massive, systematic destruction of a people and a nation - is planned down
to the last tactical detail. The
minutely calculated costs of troop movements, bombing and population
displacement is determined by economists who then estimate the war’s impact on
the national budget, future oil revenues, and the length of the occupation and
its projected costs. This
is scientific pre-meditated genocide, similar to what took place in Nazi Germany
at the Wannsee Conference of January 1942 when the high command decided on
extermination of the Jews. The
major difference with the Nazi experience is that Washington’s decision on
genocide precedes the war and is widely publicized in public documents and in
official speeches by its executioners. The
architects of annihilation come from a plurality of ethnic, racial and religious
backgrounds: two are blacks, some
are Anglo-Saxons, several are Jews and one is Hispanic-American.
With the exception of Powell, all avoided military service or any combat
role during the Vietnam War. All have been previously involved in planning or
supporting previous wars of aggression or military atrocities.
During the Vietnam War Powell wrote a report justifying the My Lai
Massacre – the U.S. Army’s slaughter of hundreds of unarmed peasants.
During the Reagan Administration, Rumsfeld was a strong advocate of
military intervention and support of terrorist surrogates in Central America,
Asia and Africa. Paul Wolfowitz and
Richard Perle designed the strategy for the systematic destruction of the
Palestinian state as advisors to Likud – a policy since put in place by
the Sharon regime. What
in the past were theoretical exercises in ethnic cleansing, planning, localized
massacres and fabricated justifications are now fused into a systematic doctrine
of international genocide. Each
member of the genocide elite brings to bear their particular pathologies:
Powell, his capacity to systematically fabricate “evidence” justifying
massacres; Condeleeza Rice, her boundless embrace of power at any price;
Rumsfeld, the frustrations of never having been anything but a mediocre
non-combatant now posturing as the world’s greatest military strategist;
Wolfowitz and Perle, their visceral hate for Palestinians, Arabs and their
unconditional embrace of Israeli ethnic cleansing and terror. What
matters to the genocide elite is not primarily oil or Wall Street – but
unlimited power and world domination. They
see no evil on the extreme right – only allies like Sharon.
They see only evil and “obstacles” among critical NATO partners like
Chirac and Shroeder. They patronize
and promote their ignoble and servile vassals
in Eastern and Southern Europe. The
beer hall bluster and insults of Rumsfeld, echo through the silent chambers of
the United Nations. The tinny voice
of Bush seeks the complicity of the American people in order to proceed with his
genocidal invasion of Iraq. Each
with their idiosyncratic style, the militarist elite move in military formation
toward the systematic destruction of an entire nation with a high sense of
impunity and blind arrogance. But
their advisers and publicists have brought to their attention that the people
are restless. Hundreds of thousands
of citizens are out in the streets in all the major cities and many of the small
towns throughout the U.S. The
genociders at first dismissed those reports as “ the usual leftists”.
But then tens of thousands of others including prominent writers,
artists, former ambassadors and generals joined their voices to those in the
street. The genociders became
shrill – they moved to deny the detonator of active public opposition: “ban
the street protests”, “deny them all media coverage”.
They now fabricate more audacious lies, give more press conferences,
write more belligerent speeches and send the Emperor Bush out to read them
wherever a safe audience can be guaranteed.
The
genociders are becoming more hysterical – their insults grosser as they face
“obstacles” in NATO and the UN and growing opposition on the domestic front.
They feel that they are running against the clock, the longer the
Europeans delay the genocide, the greater the public awareness of the horror of
the undertaking and its implications, the more likely that the opposition will
grow to millions – beyond the control of the mass media and the police.
They want genocide now: they are obsessed that all their planning, their
fantasies of world power and a Middle-East under Anglo-Israeli power free of
Arab resistance will go to naught – that they personally will fail and go down
in history as the genociders who were defeated by their own people and not by
invading armies as their predecessors in the Third Reich. At
the cupula of power the leaders of Europe and the U.S. argue over the conditions
and timing of war: the U.S. mobilizes the Eastern European satellites it has
inherited from the former USSR, while the French,
German and Belgian governments count on the vast majority of the voters
opposed to war. Washington and
Britain call up the military reserves and mobilize right wing Christian and
Zionist fundamentalists, while English, French, Italian and Spanish trade union
confederations threaten strikes and mainstream Christian churches join with
millions of citizens locking arms across nations in civil disobedience and
public protest. The
coming war in the Middle East is not simply an imperialist colonial conquest –
though it is all of that. It is a
clash between barbarism and civilization: the outcome and consequences of which
will not be limited to the military result in Iraq.
We are looking at a historic confrontation between the advocates of
genocide who believe in one, two, many Afghanistans and Iraqs and the burgeoning
opposition of millions of humanity, their best writers and intellectuals, the
noble and worthy among their religious and spiritual spokespeople and, above
all, their natural leaders among the popular classes.
There can be no compromises, there will be no end, until and when, either
the world embraces a civilization cleansed of imperialism, genocide and ethnic
slaughter or we descend to an inferno of a world ruled by genocidal psychopaths
who see war as a means for perpetual domination. As
Jean Paul Sartre once wrote there is ‘no exit’- we all have to make choices
and face the consequences. Wherever
we live and work, we must become engaged because the empire is everywhere from
Northern Mexico to downtown Buenos Aires, from the oil fields of the Middle East
to the banks in Jakarta. So too the
people’s movement is everywhere. In
the streets of Rome, London, Paris, Madrid, Athens, Seoul, Manila, New York, and
hundreds of smaller cities and towns, millions of workers, urban poor, peasants,
retirees, members of the middle class and students are mobilized.
The
great confrontation has been joined. We
are living history. I believe we
will win. Not from visionary faith,
but from the conviction that what we are fighting for represents the best of
humankind. Feb. 12, 2003 Bulatlat.com We want to know what you think of this article.
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